The Year in Schneier
Welcome back to the Schneier newsletter, a new-old media outlet that publishes once a year and doesn’t ask for any of your money. (Management reserves the right to reconsider these policies in the distant or non-distant future.)
A quick recap for new subscribers and old: You probably already know I’m Matthew Schneier. (If you need more background, you can browse my mostly-abandoned Twitter here, slightly-more-extant Instagram here.) Since 2019, I’ve been a features writer at New York Magazine, where this fall, I was named the chief restaurant critic. I have continued—and will continue—to write features from time to time, but the bulk of my work now and in the near future is eating my way through New York. Related: I started a statin.
Given that it’s all but impossible to keep up with the firehose of content we are soaked by daily, the Schneier newsletter will once again serve as a Year in Schneier: an easy-to-use digest of my favorite pieces of the past year, plus an answer to the question I now get asked more than any other (“So, where should I go out to eat?”).
Magazine features
The Age of Ozempic: Hollywood’s injectable little secret became the world’s injectable open secret this year, as Ozempic—and its compatriots, Wegovy and Mounjaro—became once-in-a-generation game-changers, a one-stop Rx for the body of your dreams. (“Should anyone suddenly appear svelte, I just assume it’s Ozempic,” Lauren Santo Domingo, the social fixture and chief brand officer of Moda Operandi, told me. “However, if they elaborate unprompted on their new diet, then I know it’s Ozempic.”) But with a cure (?) for appetite now within reach, what becomes of our stated commitment to body positivity—and without hunger, who are we, really? (One of New York Magazine’s top-five most read stories of 2023!)
What Was the ‘It’ Girl?: New York has always been good at minting its own ‘It’ girls, who inspire admiration, aspiration, mystery, and confusion in nearly equal measure. For the magazine’s annual Yesteryear issue, the staff spoke to It girls ranging from Baby Jane Holzer to Chloë Sevigny, and I dove deep into the phenomenon, hoping to answer the ineluctable question: What is ‘It’?
The Real Houselife of Jenna Lyons: Jenna Lyons dressed America (all the way up to its First Lady) at J.Crew, where she rose to the top of the pyramid and made millions. But America loves a tear-down almost as much as a build-up, and when her tutus-and-jean-jackets style got stale, she was shown the door. Life as a Real Housewife of New York offered her a way back to fame—but can she reinvent herself as a reality star without trashing her reputation in the process?
Food writing
We Are So Back: Four months into my new beat as restaurant critic, I surveyed the scene for a recap of where New York restaurants are now. My take: After years of seeking the comfort of comfort food, chefs and restaurateurs are once again ready to get weird.
Reviews, or, where to eat now: Eulalie, a time capsule in Tribeca; imitation is the sincerest form of flattery at the Fauxeons; that time I ate a pigeon skull in the Herald Square subway station, at Noksu; Roscioli, a Roman import, offers Americans a semester abroad; the sensational Sailor, from April Bloomfield and Gabriel Stulman; the soba oasis that is Uzuki, and the thrilling Japanification of Greenpoint; Sartiano’s and the (re)rise of the clubstaurant; Libertine and the $64 chicken; and the column that started it all, titan casual at Amex’s black-card-holders-only Centurion New York.
More briefly
John Early, the incinerator of millennial mores, now more than ever; on the picket line with the writers of SNL; how a local amaro brand became an instant semaphore for scruffy Brooklyn chic; and how your kid became your newest accessory (who needs four-figure accessories of her own).
Recommended reading
For any interested parties, the books I read in 2023. Favorites annotated. In reading order.
• DIDN’T NOBODY GIVE A SHIT WHAT HAPPENED TO CARLOTTA by James Hannaham (2022)
• THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER by Rebecca West (1918). People love to talk about slim, perfect little novellas. This is among the slimmest and perfectest.
• THE MAGUS by John Fowles (1965). Baggy and fabulous.
• CHÉRI by Colette (trans. Rachel Careau) (1920)
• THE BIG CLOCK by Kenneth Fearing (1946). Have to watch the movie at some point, too.
• SHY by Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green (2022). Finished after Mary’s death by NYT theater critic (and former New York Magazine theater critic) Jesse Green. Absurdly charming.
• THE TRESPASSER by Tana French (2016)
• THE RACHEL PAPERS by Martin Amis (1973). Impressively repellent.
• MRS. CALIBAN by Rachel Ingalls (1982). Another slim, perfect little novel.
• TRICK by Domenico Starnone (trans. Jhumpa Lahiri) (2018). Beware children.
• THE GUEST by Emma Cline (2023). Book of the summer—but don’t let that dissuade you.
• VANITY FAIR by William Makepeace Thackeray (1848)
• QUIET STREET by Nick McDonell (2023)
• IDLEWILD by James Frankie Thomas (2023)
• THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith (2023)
• SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh (1938)
• THE MAN IN THE WOODEN HAT by Jane Gardam (2009). The sequel to the exemplary Old Filth; looking forward to the third in the trilogy.
• THE FEAST by Margaret Kennedy (1950). For the Pym heads. From the very good McNally Jackson imprint.
• EX-WIFE by Ursula Parrott (1929). Distressingly modern.
• HOLY DAYS: THE WORLD OF A HASIDIC FAMILY by Lis Harris (1985)
• WOODCUTTERS by Thomas Bernhard (1984). A pestilent little book. Incantatory.
For much more, you can find all of my work from 2023 here, or the highlights stretching back years at my fitfully-updated website, MatthewSchneier.com.
Thanks for reading, and the occasional compliment, complaint, or review. I appreciate them all. See you in 2024.